Staff Profile

Fergal Leonard

Project overview

My project explores how regional political culture developed over the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and how political networks within regions interacted with, and were integrated into, the national-level political networks centred on the queen, her court, and the privy council. It uses the marcher community of Cumberland and Westmoreland as a case study for how one region, geographically and politically isolated but with national significance as a key frontier area, was integrated into the wider political community of Elizabethan England.

I am grateful to the Wolfson Foundation, whose funding has made my research possible.

Research interests

I am interested in political engagement across the social spectrum, especially that which showed awareness of the dynamics of court politics. As part of this, I explore popular participation in regional governance, and cooperation with the administrative and judicial apparatus of the early modern state. My own focus is on a region with a strong character of a semi-militarised frontier zone, and I am interested in the study of frontiers and border regions throughout Europe and the wider world.

Seminars and conferences

“The insolencies of the Grahams”: authority and order on the Anglo-Scottish frontier, 1593 – 1603. (Awarded first prize at the Newcastle Postgraduate Forum conference on the theme of ‘conflict’, Newcastle University, May 2019).

“Such ordinary company of evil men”: the experience of travel, ambition, and opportunity, 1590 – 1603. (Medieval and Early Modern Student Association conference, ‘Travel, Movement and Exploration in the Early Modern World’, Durham University, July 2019).

“A good subject for the current time”: the political and confessional loyalties of Henry Leigh. (Centre for Anglican Studies and Centre for Catholic Studies joint conference, ‘From Rebellion to Reconciliation’, Durham University, September 2019).